The car rental niche in Dubai or anywhere in UAE is damn competitive. With fuel prices 6 times cheaper than that in Spain and 5 times than that in India, UAE attracts both car lovers and users alike.
And if you want to rent a car in Dubai, you would find more than 200 service providers including all the small, medium, and big players as per the state statistics.
In such a competitive market, companies need to rely on all forms of marketing channels possible - including both traditional and digital marketing.
When we say DIGITAL, our stress is mostly on Social Media PPC Ads for this particular write-up. We will cover few more areas ranging from SEO to website remodeling to email marketing etc., for car rental services in the next few days to come.
Please note that this blog post is about the companies actively using Facebook Instagram Ads and not about how much follower they have or how many Ads they run.
FB Domination:
Before we portray the Ads by the Car Rental Companies in UAE, let us have a comparative study of their Facebook follower bases in the diagram below. The companies we have covered for this study are CarLease.ae, OneClickDrive, Speedy Drive, Calder, Al Maraya, Thrifty, Mazi, PROX Car, DiamondLease, Yaseer, and Enterprise Rent-A-Car.
The above diagram puts Thrifty Car Rental UAE on top in terms of followers. CarLease, Al Maraya, Prox Car, and Enterprise Rent a Car are on the lower side of the Facebook domination, as they have followers/fanbase of less than 3k.
Apart from these 11, a few local and multinational players are also operating here in UAE and have huge fan bases from around the world. For the sake of a healthier comparison, we have omitted those MNCs.
10 Car Rental Companies Leveraging Facebook Ads in UAE:
1. Thrifty Car Rental UAE
Thrifty with a follower base of 162,422 tops our list of advertisers on Facebook. Their latest Ads by the time we prepared this blog post were placed in the 1st week of August 2021.
The Ads are on automatic placement, use carousels with images of different car models, and every image repeats their motto "Great Cars, Great Rates".
From the text available under additional assets, we are quite certain that they are using Lead Forms to capture direct data on Facebook. FB Lead Gen Ads are very effective when it comes to lead generation.
They have outsourced to marketers from Nepal to handle their page, as the transparency displays.
2. DiamondLease Car Rental
In the second place, we have DiamondLease Car Rental with a follower base of 88K+. The current Ads they have were started in the month of June this year.
They are primarily targeting Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Ras Al Khaimah, Fujairah, Ajman, and Umm al Quwain with their Ads. One campaign is targeted at generating page likes & follows which justifies the growth they have on their page follower base.
The 2nd Ad they have is a Lead Gen Ad using which they are generating direct leads on FB.
DiamondLease uses in-house social media managers in UAE and outsourced managers from India to manage their page.
3. Calder Car Rental
Another FB advertiser in the car rental space in the UAE is Calder Car Rental, previously known as Calder Car Rental Dubai. Every month they put a consistent amount on the FB/Insta Ad budget and have their Ads running since 2018.
They mostly use mobile-only "Call Ads" on Facebook and use the simplest copies for the Ads with no CTA. Their FB growth can be tied to the Page Like Campaigns they have heavily relied upon so far.
4. Yaseer Rent A Car:
This car rental company in Dubai primarily targets the native locals and the Arab audience.
The primary form of Facebook Ad they use is Lead Gen Ads, in which they experiment with Carousals.
The company was previously known as 'Yaseer Car Rental & Leasing' and uses an in-house team to manage their Facebook and Instagram presences.
5. Oneclickdrive.com Car Rentals & Chauffeur Service
OneClickDrive is another Car rental service provider in UAE that uses Facebook/Instagram Ads. They mostly utilize custom conversion Ads and send the Ad traffic to their own landing pages.
Their page was previously known as 'OneClickDrive.com' and they have outsourced the page management to an Indian digital marketing agency.
6. Speedy Drive Car Rental UAE
SpeedyDrive just like OneClickDrive uses custom conversion Ads with their own landing pages.
The usage level indicates a moderate use of retargeting Facebook Ads as well.
Most of their FB/Insta Ads are carousel-based without any CTA in the Ad Copy.
The CTA button they use is for the custom conversion landing page URL on their website.
They changed their name from 'Speedy Drive Rent a Car UAE' to 'Speedy Drive Car Rental UAE' in February 2016.
Their Ads are managed in-house, and they use a smaller budget within a range of $5 to $20 per day.
7. Mazi Car Rental
With only awareness Ads on Facebook to increase their page visibility and followers, they are a little behind in the race.
Ads without CTAs do not get the results so intended, and probably they are also not getting enough results with their Facebook Ads.
In our list, Mazi ranks as one of the active Facebook advertisers with low Ad spend and frequency.
8. Enterprise Rent A Car UAE (by National Car Rental)
The Enterprise Rent a Car with its follower base of 2538 only, invests moderately in Facebook Ads. Their targeting is a little wider and uses separate targeting for residents and non-residents.
They mostly use carousel Ads and leverage custom conversions on their website to generate leads, and we believe they have outsourced the page management to freelancers in India and Lebanon.
Their Ad budget is somewhat between $10 to $30 per day.
9. PROX CAR Rental LLC
This car rental company in Dubai has a moderate follower base of 2277 people on Facebook.
Their sales and inquiries being mostly WhatsApp oriented, they utilize mobile-based FB Ads targeting users to engage over WhatsApp.
The overuse of hashtags indicates they primarily target prospects on Instagram.
The cross-search on their marketing budget indicates an Ad spend of around 1.5K AED per month on the Facebook Instagram Ads.
10. Al Maraya Rent A Car
Al Maraya has a follower base of 2270 people on Facebook and they target mostly the non-nationals either visiting or working in Dubai and around.
With a proper mix of top-of-the-funnel and mid-funnel Ads, they are one of our favorite car rental advertisers on Facebook. As the transparency suggests, their page management is outsourced to Indian digital marketers.
What does it all say?
So, with all these Ad snapshots and the comparisons, we tried to depict the FB Ad usage picture in the Car Rental industry in UAE.
This comparison tells us the different types of Ads in use among the companies in this particular niche and their backgrounds.
In case you have something to add about this topic or have some suggestions for us, please do mail us at hello@nedm.in with the subject line "Top 10 FB Advertisers from the Car Rental niche in UAE".